Ring in the new year at Bangor’s Anah Shrine

Tickets will be available at the door for “nobles, ladies and members of the public” who want to attend a New Year’s Eve dance and breakfast buffet from 8 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 31, to 12:30 a.m. Thursday, Jan. 1, at the Anah Shrine on Main Street in Bangor.

Your nonrefundable tickets are $30 per person and may be purchased, in advance, at the Shrine office on Main Street or by calling Glen Rand at 825-3285.

If you want to charge tickets on a credit card, you may do so only at the Shrine office.

Sponsored by Anah’s Drum and Bugle Corps, reports corps member Herb Hopkins of Brewer, the event features songwriter and Nashville recording artist Danny Harper and, as a special guest, acclaimed young Maine singer Kayla Wass of Hampden along with the Maine Academy of Country Music 2008 Vocal Group of the Year, the Higgins Family.

The breakfast buffet, by Stevie’s Catering, will include everything from scrambled eggs to assorted fruit crepes and baked beans.

Proceeds from this New Year’s Eve celebration benefit the sponsoring Anah Shriners Drum and Bugle Corps.

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Alma Johnson mailed information that you will find helpful about the Giving Back Thrift Shop.

Johnson wants readers to know that even though Giving Back Thrift Shop is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, it will celebrate its grand opening, during those hours on Friday, Jan. 2, at 831 Pushaw Road in Glenburn.

“We will have refreshments and a door prize,” Johnson said of the event at the shop located “right on the Glenburn-Bangor town-city line.”

Twenty-five percent of the proceeds from sale of the shop’s inventory will benefit youth and senior programs for residents of Glenburn as well as American Legion Post 211.

The remaining proceeds will be used for maintenance and other expenses to continue operating Giving Back Thrift Shop, Johnson said.

During the shop’s regular business hours, anyone looking for a good cause to support is welcome to drop by and leave items of clothing or any other goods that you no longer need or can no longer use.

Donations are always welcome, Johnson said.

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In June, the Good Samaritan Agency in Bangor held its annual golf tournament at the Bangor Municipal Golf Course, which, Executive Director Debbie Giguere reports, was “very successful.”

Giguere wrote to “thank all of our golfers, donors and sponsors” for participating in this event to benefit Good Sam, and she extended a “special” thank-you to staff of Bangor Municipal Golf Course and Fairways Grill “for all of their help and hard work.”

Next year’s tournament is scheduled for June 19.

Founded in 1902, Good Samaritan is a nonprofit agency that offers a wide range of programs for single parents that includes alternative education and child care, as well as adoption services.

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Earlier this year, a Swanville couple wrote the BDN to report a kindness extended to them that they had not experienced before, and although it has been awhile since the incident happened and, sadly, her husband has since died, the thoughts expressed by Mary Anne McCree are prefect for this season of the year.

When I spoke with Mrs. McCree, she agreed the story should still be told.

The McCrees were having a “late lunch” at the Twin Supper Buffet in Brewer, she wrote.

After being seated and making their buffet selections, she noticed “a gentleman sitting, by himself, in the other section of the dining room.”

While the couple was enjoying their meal, “the hostess came over to our table” and told them “our dinner had been paid for by a gentleman,” and the hostess wondered whether the McCrees knew him.

“We said we saw no one we recognized,” she wrote, and the hostess then told the couple “he does this many times,” paying for meals for folks such as senior citizens and pregnant women.

Mary Anne McCree wrote that, as seniors, she and her late husband had attended “as many church suppers, benefit suppers, benefit auctions or benefit yard sales as possible,” and that they had moved to Maine from New Jersey more than six years ago.

“There were never any church suppers or helpful benefits for people in need in New Jersey,” she said.

For this extra-special dose of Maine kindness, Mary Anne McCree extends her thanks to “the thoughtful gentleman for his generosity.”

“This is the first time” anything like that had happened to the couple, she said, concluding her letter with a sincere thank-you to the anonymous gentleman.